As Donald Trump’s Russia scandal continues to deepen, government officials are now falling into three categories: 1) Those who tried to sound the alarm about the scandal, or got fired for fear they might sound the alarm. 2) Those who have passively refused to help Trump cover up the scandal. 3) Those who appear to be complicit in trying to help Trump cover it up. With each passing day, CIA Director Mike Pompeo is increasingly giving the appearance of being in category 3.

Donald Trump hand picked Pompeo to run the CIA by plucking him out of Congress, which is cause for alarm considering Trump’s pattern of surrounding himself with corrupt people who are personally loyal to him. But that alone was not evidence that Pompeo was dirty. Now comes this story from the New York Times (link), which reveals that Pompeo kept giving Trump classified security briefings while Michael Flynn was in the room, even though he knew Flynn was on the payrolls of multiple foreign governments.

So maybe Mike Pompeo was merely guilty of bad judgment by disclosing this information to Flynn, or perhaps he knew Trump would overrule him anyway. But here’s the problem. When it leaked to the media last month that Trump tried and failed to get NSA Director Mike Rogers and DNI Dan Coats to obstruct the Russia investigation, Pompeo’s name wasn’t anywhere in the story. It’s a given that Trump also leaned on the CIA Director to obstruct the investigation. So where is Pompeo’s denial? Why didn’t he leak to the media that he also refused Trump’s advances, like Rogers and Coats did?

This gives the appearance that Donald Trump asked CIA Director Mike Pompeo to obstruct the investigation, and that Pompeo went along with it. Throw in the news that Pompeo was letting Flynn have classified intel despite knowing he was dirty, and it’s even more of a mess. Again, this merely makes Pompeo look dirty in the Trump-Russia scandal. That doesn’t mean he is dirty. If Pompeo’s hands are clean, it’s time for him to find a way to get the word out that he’s not a conspirator in Trump’s heightening criminal scandal.